Ever since I became a Realtor in 2004, I have seen many buyers submit letters to sellers along with their purchase offers. A buyer letter serves as a way of introducing the buyers and their family, if they have one. And there’s the problem: not all buyers have families and can write the glowing letters that play on the sellers’ heart strings. Because of this, in 2019 the California Association of Realtors cautioned Realtors against using such letters as they can be seen as discriminatory. Is this a little too politically correct?
Consider the case where a seller receives multiple offers, all of which are submitted blindly, and the sellers decide to try negotiating with a lower offer because they wrote a touching letter. It’s perfectly within the seller’s rights to choose who to negotiate with, but the situation becomes a little dicey when they are making that choice because the buyers wrote a beautiful letter and included a photo of their perfect family. Is that discrimination? What if that family of the buyer who wrote the letter was white, and the buyer that made the best offer was a single, non-white male who didn’t write a letter? You might be asking yourself, ‘how do they know he’s not white?’. You’d be amazed at how often sellers will Google buyers.
There are many variables that come into play here. One is that the family with the lower offer might have more money down than the single non-white male, or they might have fewer contingencies. Beyond the offer price, in the interest of fairness and in the seller’s own best interest, the things they should really be concentrating on are financing and contingencies.
I must confess I stopped reading buyer letters years ago. Honestly, I jump right to the price, financing, and contingencies in the offer because that’s what’ll provide the best outcome for the seller. I know sellers can fall in love with families and their stories. That’s perfectly fine when there are no other offers, or if in a multiple offer situation the letter writer has got more favorable terms than any other offers. Buyer letters can enhance the connection between the buyers to the sellers beyond their written offer and cement a deal.
In a recent multiple offer situation, I requested that buyers’ agents not include the letters. My seller was grateful. When she had initially purchased her home, she remembered disliking writing what she called, ‘a grovel letter’. Here she was putting all this money into a down payment then taking on a 30- year mortgage, and for her to get picked the sellers needed intimate details about her life? It didn’t seem right to her.
In my last multiple offer situation, I forgot to ask people not to include letters. It didn’t matter to my sellers though, and they went with the best offer. Most of the time that’s what happens anyway. Still, to do it right, moving forward I will request that agents refrain from submitting buyer letters in multiple offer situations. It may seem a little too PC, or woke or whatever, but it’s the right thing to do.